Wednesday, July 30, 2014

A stylistic thing: he goes on and on about something, as if to capture it (impossible) from every angle. The Big Black Bird (Huge Bird) bit will stick with me awhile.

Excerpt:

Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought. We may see only what we do see which is nothing else but that which we see. Again I watched Hoeller from my window in Hoeller's garret, as he sewed together the huge black bird which he had stuffed to bursting. Suddenly I saw, perhaps my eyes had become adjusted to the lighting down there in Hoeller's workshop, or else the lighting had suddenly changed, anyway I saw several such huge birds, the back of Hoeller's workshop was filled with such birds, not all of these great, indeed huge birds were equally large, not all of them were black, but these were absolutely no local birds, probably, I thought, these are birds from the collection of some bird fancier, one of those rich bird freaks who can afford to travel to America, to South America or to India, in order to shoot such huge birds and add them to his collection. A huge bird collection, I kept thinking, a huge bird collection, and I slapped my forehead as I thought again and again, a huge bird collection, a huge bird collection! Roithamer had always spoken at length about Hoeller's work, his procedures in preserving, stuffing andsoforth all kinds of animals, every possible kind of fowl, Roithamer had always profited, so he himself said, from watching Hoeller at work, seeing how those dead creatures were dissected and stuffed and sewed up.

Again "not much," but then again: what compares to the nightmares cycling and recycling through the nightly news? Anyway, I saw a (bed)raggled Rocky the Raccoon crossing the road Igor-like on the library side of Bay Shore after a night on the town or an early morning raid. I thought: If I hurry I'll catch him and his portrait. No such luck. Like some supervarmint he slipped into the storm drain (see below) and left only some skid marks behind.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Not much new since I've gotten home. Besides home as home and return as return, I'll say: had to deal with a flat, bucked rather than peeted (because of the flat), ran into this #Selfie (due to bucking instead of peeting), read a little in Bernhard's Correction, and imagined (inspired by #Selfie) the portrait of Self as a collage of texts and photos.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Jan Peter Tripp is the son of the painter Franz Josef Tripp and his wife Josefa Tripp. Jan Peter Tripp went to Oberstdorf in the elementary school and the secondary school, together with the later writer WG Sebald .The two linked up to Sebald's death in 2001, a deep friendship, and Sebald dedicated in his collection of essays lodging in a country house, the last chapter Tripps painting.Tripp made ​​in 1965 in Oberstdorf, the High School and then studied for two years at the Free Art School in Stuttgart in Gerd Neisser .From 1967 to 1970 he attended the Academy in Stuttgart and studied sculpture at Rudolf Daudert .He then spent two years as a master student of painting at Rudolf Hausner .In 1971, he was by the German Academic Exchange Service with a university scholarship in Vienna excellent.The following year he received another award as the scholarship of the German National Academic Foundation . After graduating, Jan Peter Tripp painted for a month in the psychiatric state hospital Weissenau near Ravensburg . The resulting there etchings made him known nationally.In 1976, he had numerous jobs as a stage designer at the Staatstheater Stuttgart .In 1979, he co-wrote with the artists John Grützke and Arno Waldschmidt the prose work Pantalon ouvert.In 1983 he was awarded by the Foundation Barkenhoff a scholarship from the artist Worpswede and became a member of the German Association of Artists .

Jan Peter Tripp is one of the foremost German exponents of realism .He lives and works as a freelance painter and graphic artist in Central Bergheim in Alsace .Since 1971 he exhibited in many galleries and institutions at home and abroad. [1]

Thomas Bernhard (German: [ˈbɛʁnhaʁt]; born Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard; February 9, 1931 – February 12, 1989) was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet. Bernhard, whose body of work has been called "the most significant literary achievement since World War II,"[1] is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era.

Life

Often criticized in Austria as a Nestbeschmutzer (one who dirties his own nest) for his critical views, Bernhard was highly acclaimed abroad.

His work is most influenced by the feeling of being abandoned (in his childhood and youth) and by his incurable illness, which caused him to see death as the ultimate essence of existence. His work typically features loners' monologues explaining, to a rather silent listener, his views on the state of the world, often with reference to a concrete situation. This is true for his plays as well as for his prose, where the monologues are then reported second hand by the listener.

His main protagonists, often scholars or, as he calls them, Geistesmenschen, denounce everything that matters to the Austrian in tirades against the "stupid populace" that are full of contumely. He also attacks the state (often called "Catholic-National-Socialist"), generally respected institutions such as Vienna's Burgtheater, and much-loved artists. His work also continually deals with the isolation and self-destruction of people striving for an unreachable perfection, since this same perfection would mean stagnancy and therefore death. Anti-Catholic rhetoric is not uncommon.

"Es ist alles lächerlich, wenn man an den Tod denkt" (Everything is ridiculous, when one thinks of Death) was his comment when he received a minor Austrian national award in 1968, which resulted in one of the many public scandals he caused over the years and which became part of his fame. His novel Holzfällen (1984), for instance, could not be published for years due to a defamation claim by a former friend. Many of his plays—above all Heldenplatz (1988)—were met with criticism from many Austrians, who claimed they sullied Austria's reputation. One of the more controversial lines called Austria "a brutal and stupid nation ... a mindless, cultureless sewer which spreads its penetrating stench all over Europe." Heldenplatz, as well as the other plays Bernhard wrote in these years, were staged at Vienna's famous Burgtheater by the controversial director Claus Peymann.

Even in death Bernhard caused disturbance by his, as he supposedly called it, posthumous literary emigration, by disallowing all publication and stagings of his work within Austria's borders. The International Thomas Bernhard Foundation, established by his executor and half-brother Dr. Peter Fabjan, has subsequently made exceptions, although the German firm of Suhrkamp remains his principal publisher.

The correspondence between Bernhard and his publisher Siegfried Unseld from 1961 to 1989 – about 500 letters – was published in December 2009 at Suhrkamp Verlag, Germany.[3]

If he nevertheless persevered with writing, then only, as Jean Starobinski notes, in order to hasten the moment when the pen would fall from his hand and the essential things would be said in the silent embrace of reconciliation and return. Less heroically, but certainly no less correctly, one could also see writing as a continually self-perpetuating compulsive act, evidence that of all individuals afflicted by the disease of thought, the writer is perhaps the most incurable.

St. Peter’s Island (German: St. Petersinsel, French: Île de St-Pierre) is a peninsula situated in Lake Biel in the canton of Bern, Switzerland. It has a length of about 5 kilometres and a maximum width of 800 metres. Its highest point is 474 metres above sea level or 45 metres above lake level (429 m). It was formed in the last Ice Age (see Pleistocene), when the Rhône Glacier reached as far as the Jura mountains. It is a promontory of the Jolimont, above Erlach. Politically the island is split between the municipalities of Erlach and Twann-Tüscherz, the largest part belonging to the latter municipality.

In the late nineteenth century following the engineering works of the Jura water correction, the water-level of the three lakes of the Seeland have dropped enough to clear the until then hidden isthmus, linking Erlach to St. Peter’s Island, which has eversince become a peninsula.

Monks of the Cluniac order were the first inhabitants of the island, and built a monastery here in 1127.

Before his expulsion, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, spent two months on the island in 1765 calling it the "happiest time of his life".[1]